The thread title was just meant to be humorous.
Tabata designed his interval workout for trained athletes, i.e., elite speed skaters.
I don’t really know whether doing 4 second sprints every minute would provide a significant aerobic stimulus in a trained athlete or not. I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out, however.
I have tried to locate the original paper to see if perhaps contained additional information that might help answer the question, but no success so far.